Many enterprises expect to use the Internet to reach far-flung agents and customers. The Internet is a public network of computer networks each with multiple nodes. The Internet uses open, standard protocols for addressing nodes and passing information from one node to another. A user accesses the Internet by logging onto one of the computers on the network, often owned and operated by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Typically, a user establishes a severable link between the user's own computer and the ISP computer. A client application program (a client) running on the user's computer interacts with a server application program (a server) running on one of the nodes on the Internet.
The World Wide Web (the Web) is a collection of resources available over the Internet that are provided by various servers and that can be accessed by a particular client called a Web browser using a hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP). Using a Web browser, a user can select a resource on the Web, identified by its Universal Resource Locator (URL) name, and have that resource presented to the user. The resource usually includes textual information and often includes graphical, video and audio elements.
For electronic commerce using the Web, the resource provided by the server must include a mechanism for accepting user information. For example, many Web resources include forms for accepting product orders. Effective transactions may also require the resource provide access to a database. For example, a database enables the server to track inventory of products available for purchase, or to find the account information requested by the client.
Any team that develops a Web site faces the challenge of having to deal with developing multiple components. The term component is used herein to refer to software (code or data) configured for a particular set of end users. A component may be a database base object or a software module that performs functions such as generating screen displays, receiving user input, and carrying out data processing operations that integrate and select data, and present the data to a user or to other processes which, in turn, present the data to the user. A set of integrated components that provide a particular functionality is referred to as an application. For example, a set of components that implement an accounting system is referred to as an accounting application.
Applications reside and run on an application infrastructure. The term application infrastructure refers to computer resources that may be shared by multiple users, including hardware, operating system, disk storage, and a database server, a web server, and an application server.
A particular configuration of an application infrastructure provided to an application is called an environment. For example, an environment may be a particular configuration that includes access to a particular directory or set of UNIX operating system functions, to a quantity of disk storage, to a database server under a user account, to a fixed number of database sessions, and to a tablespace (e.g. a set of data files used to hold data) dedicated to the application by a database server.
Developing and maintaining an application for an enterprise is an enormously complex undertaking requiring expert personnel. While a large enterprise has the finances to assemble a team having the requisite expertise, most enterprises are too small to assemble and support such a team. Small to medium sized enterprises need a way to generate an effective presence on the Internet, complete with an application, without incurring the full cost of a team of programmers and experts.
To offset these costs, enterprises employ service companies to maintain the applications and environments in which the applications run. The technique of using service companies to maintain and operate applications is referred to as application hosting. A hosting environment may be accessed via, for example, the Internet, or an extended intranet. Application hosting can reduce the cost of managing applications because it allows companies to share the resources needed to run an application, resources that not only include an application and its environment, but the experts needed to maintain the application and its environments, including computer administrative support personnel.
The term “user” is used herein to refer to a particular entity for whom an application and its associated data is being hosted. The entity may be a human individual or an enterprise.
Application hosting reduces costs by enabling an enterprise to combine resources with other enterprises to manage the complex process of maintaining applications and their environments. Another way to reduce costs is to reduce the complexity of this process. Various complex tasks included in this process are the creation and configuring of an environment needed to develop and run an application, and the installation of various application components into these environments. These tasks are collectively referred to as deploying software.
Producing software requires maintaining multiple environments to run various copies and versions of an application. These multiple environments include a development environment, a testing environment, a staging environment, and a production environment. The development environment is used to develop software. Access to the environment is limited to developers. The testing environment is used to test software. Access to the environment is limited to testers. The production environment is an environment where an application is used by an end user. The staging environment simulates a particular production environment, and is thus configured similarly to a particular production environment, and is used to test how well an application will run in the production environment.
Deploying an application is a laborious and complex process. Those that perform the task have to deal with a large range of technology. The process entails, for example, analyzing an application to determine a suitable environment for it, identifying the application's various components, installing and configuring hardware and operating systems for a new environment, configuring an existing environment, running installation routines to install application components, and configuring network and security mechanisms.
Based on the foregoing, it is clearly desirable to provide a system that reduces the complex task of deploying software.